Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution

摘要: Genomic surveys in humans identify a large amount of recent positive selection. Using the 3.9-million HapMap SNP dataset, we found that selection has accelerated greatly during last 40,000 years. We tested null hypothesis observed age distribution positively selected linkage blocks is consistent with constant rate adaptive substitution human evolution. show high enough to explain number recently variants would predict (i) site heterozygosity at least 10-fold lower than humans, (ii) strong relationship and local recombination rate, which not (iii) an implausibly substitutions between chimpanzees, (iv) nearly 100 times high-frequency disequilibrium blocks. Larger populations generate more new mutations, consistency data historical pattern population growth. consider demographic growth be linked past changes cultures ecologies. Both processes have contributed extraordinarily rapid genetic evolution our species.